Park Swings & Photographs
by poeticgrace
Summary: Her best friend is always there when she needs him, but tonight, they need each other. Jarly ONE SHOT.


"Jase, I need you."

There were few things that had the power to stop Jason Morgan's life on a dime, but those four words said in that voice by that woman sent his entire universe spinning off its axis. "Where are you?"

He could hear the tears in her voice as she shakily replied, "Our room."

Hanging up the phone with a promise to be there within ten minutes, Jason ignored the confused looks Maxie and Spinelli were offering from his sofa as he grabbed his keys from his desk. Shoving on his leather jacket, he took the stairs two at a time when the elevator took too long to reach the penthouse level. His secured parking garage was empty save for the two armed guards standing stoically beside the stalls where Maxie's car was parked along with his armored sports utility vehicle and his beloved motorcycle. It was an unseasonably warm night for January in Port Charles, and he needed the speed that would get him to her as quickly as possible.

Within minutes, he was making his way up the back alley that ran behind the city's favorite dive bar. He had spent countless hours here knocking back cold drafts and shooting pool until he was able to forget his latest immortal sin. No one asked him any questions here. They all knew who he was and to stay clear of him when he slapped a pair of big bills on the counter with an order to Coleman to keep them coming. The only person that dared approach him when was like that was the one person who could always get through to him. Coleman kept her number taped along side the phone beneath the bar in case of nights like those. She always pretended that she just happened to stop by for a drink, and Jason never asked any questions. He would simply hand her a cue stick and tell her that it was her shot before requesting two more bottles be sent over to his reserved table.

However, tonight, there would be no games of pool or drinking beer after beer until they both forgot their names. Jake's also happened to be the place they would go when Carly's world was crashing down. Jason had paid Coleman a significant sum of cash upfront when he had taken over managing the bar. It was understood that the room was reserved as theirs and that no one other than he or Carly were ever permitted to go there. It was their safe haven from the world, the one place he could count on when everything else let him down. She had sought him out there time and time again, after her marriage with Jax collapsed and after he had finally let go of Elizabeth. They would sit side by side on the bed and just talk until balance had returned to their lives. When a call came in like the one that he had received tonight, he knew that his trip to Jake's would be filled with conversation and tears and seeing his best friend's heartbreak.

Jason didn't even bother to acknowledge anyone sitting in the bar as he slipped up the back staircase. He paused outside the door, listening for sobs. He was surprised when he was met with silence. Sliding the key out of his back pocket, he quietly let himself into the small, stark room. Carly was sitting on the bed with stacks and stacks of photographs scattered around her. Her eyes were dull and lifeless as she fingered one snapshot after another. Even from the distance of the doorway, he knew immediately what had sent her into a tailspin. Walking over to the bed, he called her name softly. When she didn't respond, he tried once again. Still not eliciting any reaction at all from her, Jason reached out and tilted her chin gently until her eyes met his.

"Carly, what can I do?" Whatever numbness that had been holding her together immediately melted away at his question. She held up the photo that she had been clutching so tightly in her hand. It was of the three of them – Carly, Jason and Michael – on the last day of his winter vacation before the shooting. "Where did these come from?"

"Morgan was playing with this new airplane that Sonny got him for Christmas when he dropped it down the stairs. I went into the kitchen to find some glue, hoping that we could fix it," she explained almost emotionlessly. "I was looking around in the junk drawer, and I guess I hadn't gone through it in awhile. I found all these disposable cameras that needed to be developed. I had Mercedes drop them off when she took to Morgan to his karate class. I picked them up an hour later. I had no idea what was on them, Jase. I forgot we had taken all of those."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jason began to sift through the dozens of photographs she had piled neatly on the bed. Michael and Morgan were the main subjects of most of them. Jax, Jason and Sonny all made an appearance here and there along with Carly, Bobbie and Lucas. He returned his attention back to the first photo she had handed him. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have asked her for a copy. It was almost strange to see the three of them alone together all these years later. It had been a long time since a photo was taken without Morgan in it. Staring back at him was his original family, the one he had lost before the world had turned itself upside down. While he was certainly glad for the addition of his godson, he couldn't help but get a little nostalgic for the olden days when it had been the three of him in his penthouse. He hadn't realized how happy they'd been together until it was too late.

Carly reached out and rested her warm hand on his wrist. "Jase, I miss him."

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he pushed the photographs aside to gather her in his arms. "I miss him, too," he commiserated as she buried her face in his shoulder. There were not a lot of people in Jason's life that mattered these days. Other than Carly and Morgan, he only really had Spinelli, Jake and Monica that he cared about anymore. His relationship with Elizabeth was long gone, and his friendship with Sonny had reached the point of being beyond repair. "Where's Morgan?"

"My mom picked him up," she answered, appreciating his concern for her other son. "I managed not to cry when I was on the phone with her. I called her before the car dropped me off here. I didn't even think about what I was doing. I just told the driver to bring me here because I knew that I had to see you. Jase, it's not getting any easier. There are moments where I think that I've found a way to be okay with it and then I can't breathe. I'll come back to reality, and it's like I'm losing my son all over again. It's not fair. Why do we have to keep reliving this?"

Jason knew exactly what she meant. He relived that horrific night at the hospital every morning when he woke up with the weight of Sonny's organization on his mind. He hated running things but did it for Carly. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for her, including walk away from it if that's what she decided that she needed. He had once told Elizabeth that this was the life that he had chosen, but for Carly, he knew that he would find a way. She would never ask, of course; she was strong enough to deal with his life. She had never once blamed him for the life they'd made. Jason had been the one to bring Michael into Sonny's fold, even after he had promised he would always protect him. He had loved the little boy even before he was born as his own son. He loved him as much as he loved Jake, just like he loved Morgan.

"I honestly don't know, Carly," he confessed, pulling back slightly so that their blue eyes could meet. He absently wiped away a tear that managed to escape down her cheek before resting his forehead against hers. "Fuck, this hurts."

She knew immediately that his pain was just as immense as hers. Jason never cursed, not even when he got angry at her for one of her disastrous plans. She'd never heard him curse when was hurt or when he was working or when she made a situation worse. She wished that she had the words to take away the pain for both of them, but saying the right thing had never been Carly's strong suit. So, instead, she said the only thing she could think of that could even begin to be enough. "I love you, Jase."

He started to nod, his cheek brushing against hers awkwardly as he pulled her close to him again. "I know," he managed, choking on a stifled sob buried deep in his throat. She felt the wetness slide down her neck as tears fell from his eyes. There had been too many moments like this one since April. "I love you, Carly."

Carly had believed that raising all that money at the hospital benefit would be enough to make her start feeling better about Michael again. However, while she was pleased with the good that the money would do for children like her son, visiting with the patients and meeting their families had only made her miss the young boy that much more. She had been haunted by his memory for weeks now as she wondered what he would be like now. He was starting to grow up when the shooting happened. There was no doubt that he would have gone through some changes over the past year. Instead, he spent those ten months locked inside his mind from the confines of a bed miles away from his family and his home.

"Jax doesn't understand, you know?" she began. "He says that he does. I know he tried. I don't doubt that he loved Michael as much as he could, but he didn't love him like we did. He couldn't have. He wasn't there when Michael giggled for the first time or when he was up all hours of the night until he fell asleep because you read him that book. He wasn't there when he learned to ride a bike or on his first day of school or the day he won the spelling bee in second grade. No one was there for everything except you and me, Jase. Not Sonny, not Jax, just you and me. He's our little boy."

Jason had a flashback of holding Michael for the first time in the nursery at General Hospital. He had been so intimidated by the tiny infant, but once Bobbie had placed him in his arms, it had been love at first sight. No other love had ever impacted him so much, even that of Jake. It wasn't the depth that was unmatched, it was the intensity. Jason had vowed right then and there that he would always protect Michael. It was one of the only two promises he had ever made in his life. "I promised him that I wouldn't miss a thing," he reminded her. "I also promised you that I would always catch you whenever you fall. I'm looking at you now, Carly, and I can see you wanting to crash down hard. I'm not going to let you. The bottom isn't going to fall out of your world. It can't, not when we still need you."

"We?" she laughed bitterly. "No one needs me, Jase."

"You know that's not even remotely true," he chastised her lightly as he tucked a wavy tendril behind her ear affectionately. "Morgan needs you, Carly. He needs his mother. You're the one consistency in his life – the one person that has never suddenly disappeared from his life. Your mother and your brother need you. I need you."

Carly looked down at the photographs and thought how nice it would be to slip away from the world so that she could be with Michael again. However, she knew that would only be selfish. She couldn't leave Morgan here alone. No matter how deep her grief ran, her love for her children ran deeper. "Jase…" she whimpered. It killed him how small she sounded.

"Hey, I have an idea," he decided suddenly. There was nothing that would take this pain away from either of them, but he was determined to make that light shine in her azure eyes again. "Let's go pick Morgan up for your mom's and head to Florida for a few days. I'll have the jet get ready. We can pack up and grab Spinelli and just lose ourselves in the ocean. We haven't been down there for years. Michael loved it. I think it'll be a nice homage to him if we share that same joy with his little brother."

She nodded slowly, liking the idea of getting away. She knew that she should tell Jax that she was leaving, but she didn't want him to know. She needed for this to be about them, and thinking of her soon-to-be ex-husband would only take away from that. "That sounds nice," she agreed. "Can we go somewhere else first?"

Twenty minutes later, Carly climbed down from the back of Jason's motorcycle and handed him her helmet before grabbing his hand and pulling him after her. The sky was a perfect velvet black with about a million stars sprinkled overhead for just the right lighting. Rice Park was still and silent as they made their way down the gravel path toward a familiar pocket of grass. Without a word, Carly fell into the leather seat of the swing, and Jason started to push her. This was Michael's favorite place to go, and the three of them had spent a lot of time here with Morgan. Jason had recently adopted this half of the park and had it renamed in Michael's honor.

"He loved this place."

"Do you know why?" she asked him. He could barely make out her beautiful face in the pale moonlight. Jason shook his head. He'd always assumed that it was just Michael's love of the outdoors that drew him to this park. "I told him a story when he was a little boy about the first time we ever brought him here. I told him how you had swung with him in your arms and how he laughed as you swung back and forth. Ever since then, he loved it. We came here a lot when you were out of town that first time. It was kind of our place to be with you when we couldn't."

Jason hadn't forgotten that day, but he had no clue that Carly and Michael had cherished the memory as much as he did. "I came here all the time," he revealed. "When I was gone all those months, this is the one place I let myself come back to in my mind. I had a perfect memory of our time here."

"I'm ready to go, Jase," she whispered, her voice getting lost in the dark. He reached for the rusted chains of the old swing and pulled her to a stop. They were frozen in the moment, their gazes held steady as both of them tried to predict what should come next. They had never really been good at figuring that part out. They could deal with the here and now, but when it came for planning tomorrow, it just wasn't in their genetic makeup. They were true adrenaline junkies who lived in the moment. "Take me to Florida."

With a resolute nod, he reached for her hand and led her back toward his motorcycle. Just before she swung her lace gracefully over the edge of the bike, she turned her head to the side and smiled at him in a very Carly way. "What is it now?" he asked, feigning irritation at the plan he knew that she was concocting in her head. The truth was, as disastrous as those plans usually were, he almost lived for them. He loved the craziness that only she could come up with and he loved being the one to save her.

"Everything is going to be okay."

"Okay," he drawled uncertainly. He wasn't really sure where this was going. "And how can you be so sure of this all of a sudden?"

"You're with me," she shrugged. "Nothing bad can happen when it's you and me against the world, Jase. I've been telling you this for years, back when I tried to convince you to get those phones that we could only talk to each other on."

He laughed at the memory. "You're crazy."

"Possibly," she agreed as he climbed on front of the motorcycle, "but you love me anyway."

"I certainly do," he relented before kickstarting the motorcycle. The thunderous roar of the bike quaked beneath their closely pressed bodies. Out of everything that he had ever felt in his life, this was his favorite feeling in the entire world. Carly against him on his motorcycle in the middle of the night, the wind whipping around them. "I think you were right, Carly. Everything is going to be alright."

Jason pulled the bike back onto the main road, its engine roaring loudly into the dark sky. Flying past the dive bar they had left earlier that evening, they had managed to go from the lowest of the lows to the highest of highs in a matter of a few hours. Life would never be the same as it had been all those years ago, but maybe it could be its own version of amazing. Maybe they would have another miracle. Maybe they would get to see all three of their boys and Spinelli grow into the men that they were meant to be. Maybe they would still be best friends when they were ninety-three, and maybe Jason would still be trying to talk Carly out of a crazy scheme as they plotted at the retirement home. In the mean time, the sound of her laughter rang in Jason's ears and brought him the only peace that he needed to know.


End file.
